The present invention relates to an IC card incorporating an IC circuit in a card, and an IC card identification system for identifying various IC card states wherein the IC card is supplied to a card holder or a customer through an issuer such as a manufacturer or a bank and the card holder goes shopping in a store.
A conventional magnetic card has a magnetic coating which is formed on the surface thereof and on which a key code or a confidential number, an account number and so on are magnetically recorded. The magnetic contents such as the key code are known to at least bank personnel since the holder as a user must submit his key code to the bank. In addition, a magnetic record can be relatively easily accessed. Because of this, the private key code of the magnetic card cannot be kept secret.
In place of such a magnetic card, an IC card incorporating an IC has been recently proposed that disables easy reading of recorded contents. However, there are many opportunities for unfair practice on such an IC card. It is very difficult to prevent such unfair practice in a construction of a conventional IC card and its identification system.